Watch your step

So, someone gave me a link that showed me RK'S "New Kyoto Arc" and even though being warned by two other people about how bad it was, I just had to check it out for myself. Just to see HOW bad. Well, not only was it bad - it was BORING as all hell. Talk about telling and not showing. I hate the plot changes, but more than the plot changes do I hate it's the fact that this was basically 48mins of talking 10mins of credits and about 2mins of fighting. No. Not even fighting. 2mins of action that was NOT standing around talking.

I was so bored I had trouble even getting my anger up at the things that SHOULD have enraged me. I was THAT bored. I ended up playing with a plushie while watching to keep my hand from closing out the video several times. I kept thinking: Wow, this is going on and on it's gotta be over soon right? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I STILL HAVE 50MINS LEFT!?

For an example of this horrible telling and not showing. Usui walks up to Shisho and says he was busy killing 50 men. For a minute I actually was like: Is he joking? Just trying to be bad ass? He says it as a person who gets his ass kicked by a child, but then goes ahead and said it was 17 gangs with rocket launchers. WHY COULDN'T THEY HAVE SHOWED HIM KILLING THESE PEOPLE!? Even just one or two. I was bored I was DYING for some pointless slaughter.

They also did a pretty good job of making Kenshin look like a dick if you ask me. He let Misao follow him to see Shisho and doesn't even bother to ask her name until LATER. Huh, I just took you into a HORRIBLY dangerous place - btw, what's your name crazy lady? *headdesk* And this isn't the only reason if I hadn't watched the original anime that I probably would have thought Kenshin was suppose to be some asshole pretending to act nice.

Hiko was also painfully out of character too. Actually saying Kenshin did a good job. Granted Kenshin wasn't around for that, but it still killed me to hear him admitting that to people OUT LOUD.

Each of the fights that did happen didn't last longer than a minute or two. If you do watch it. Cry for Chou with me and how badly his fight is portrayed in this "retelling". Instead this new ova was too busy telling us what we should already know if you were a fan of the show. And if you weren't a fan of the show before, all you'd get from this is it's a bunch of people standing around talking about what just happened without showing anything interesting at all. Like: OMG! I JUST beat the crap out of this guy. No, I'm totally not going to flashback to my fight. It just happened two seconds ago, just take my word for it. But let me talk to you about it as monotone as I can because this does not call for excitement at all.

SPOILER!

One of my favorite fights in Kenshin is Saito versus Usui so it was a bit of a spit in the face when not only does Usui get killed by Shisho, BUT THEY DON'T EVEN SHOW THE FIGHT. The closest you get is a shot of Shisho swinging his sword once or twice. You don't get to see Usui use his technique. Nothing. He's just dead and wasted. Then as he's dying Shisho and him have this big "deep" talk that was just SOOOO stupid.

END SPOILER

whiteadelphi got it right. This piece of crap is worse than Seisōhen. At least Seisōhen was pretty to look at and had some fun moments to it. Yes, it completely missed target with everything after Kyoto, but at least it didn't try to totally re-write history that didn't need to be re-written. They at least tried to show SOMETHING new in a new way. It failed, but it had points you can enjoy. This thing though, it's so boring and has nothing but talk I really don't EVER expect to watch it again. At least with Seisōhen I can rewatch for the few scenes I did like. Even if that reviewing is rare.